


Extraction

by JaqofSpades



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen, Twelve Days of Fic-mas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CIA operative Veronica Mars has been tasked with a particularly delicate extraction.  Things do not go according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extraction

Dr Bruce Banner, Veronica reads. Last known location: Vingkarasup, Kerala. Doing good works, she winces. Apparently that's what the agency terms 'ralcalcitrant'. At least the analysts have the good sense to send her in with orders to tread softly. 

Not that it's the infamous Hulk they're worried about.

His roommate. “Lover?!?” one bright spark has scribbled in margins, with a crude little doodle of a huge monster kissing a tiny spider. From what's she's heard, it's Natasha Romanov who's the monster, and Bruce Banner should be crowned a saint, but the Agency isn't worried about their morals. With SHIELD on indefinite hiatus after Fury was stripped of his commad, the CIA figures his assets are ripe for the plucking, and so here she is.

Veronica Mars, plucker.

She ignores the sour taste in her mouth to take in the information objectively, systematically cataloguing lines of sight, weaknesses, offensive strengths, available defenses, access to weapons (hah!). So much for tread softly, she fumes. Nothing on what they're doing there. No real backgrounder to tell her who they are as people, what they might want.

Just how to escape when Hulk goes nuclear. If the Black Widow doesn't get you first.

Veronica sighs and pulls out this week's burner. “I need a favour ;)” she types rapidly, and hits send, before opening up the chat link. She keeps the request tight and cryptic – names and the place, run through the scrambler Mac wrote herself. Publically, they were never friends. CIA operatives don't stay in touch with hacker activists. But then, she's not always Veronica Mars. And Cindy Mackenzie doesn't even exist any more, on paper.

The data is rolling across her screen in minutes – grocery bills, utility bills, patient lists, a list of far too familiar names, and corresponding transactions in a Swiss bank account that is technically untraceable. Call logs, Veronica notes with satisfaction. Actual secret agent stuff, she thinks, sniffing at the lousy surveillance photos.

“Still a genius,” she types, then closes the link.

*

Veronica plunges into the sweaty maelstrom with a grin. She doesn't have to break character to appreciate the exuberance of the place; the beauty and colour and life on every corner is a nirvana for the photojournalist she's supposed to be. She'd dyed her hair back in Dubai, and the brown contacts blend nicely, but there's nothing to be done about her skin. Fading into the background was never an option here, she knows, so the cover made sense. Even so, there's a nagging voice in her head telling her to go in straight, to dump all the bullshit and do it honourably.

And when exactly did her conscience start to sound like her favourite crimelord?

Neither of them – her conscience or Weevil – had been happy with her choices lately, but this was the bed she made, Veronica thought pensively. She was just stubborn enough to keep lying in it. She glances to her left and is forced to laugh outright – the old Indian favourite, a fakir stretched on his bed of nails – is grinning up at her from beside the luggage carousel.

“An offering, ma'am?” he suggests politely, and it's Veronica Mars, not the brown-haired, brown-eyed Cleo Cavalli, who scrabbles in her camera bag for a handful of change.

“Thank you for the lesson, senhor,” she says gravely, and pulls Lizbet's battered baby-blue suitcase from the pile of bags.

Her rooms are on the very edge of the tourist quarter, just a few blocks from the clinic Dr Banner has set up to treat the slum dwellers. Veronica dumps her suitcases and starts wandering, her camera clicking, clicking, clicking, until a bunch of ragamuffins find her.

“My photo for a dollar, Mrs,” a scrawny teenager offers, while an enterprising young boy on a cart at her feet yells “my photo 100 rupees.” It's the girl in the back, threadbare sari barely hiding her pregnant belly, that Veronica smiles at.

“Can I take your photo? Two dollars?”

“Of course, of course, of course,” the ringleader crows, pulling the girl forward with a sharp tug. “She Mahata. Very beautiful. Beautiful pictures.”

Mahata needs a good meal more than she needs her photograph taken, Veronica thinks silently, but then, that's probably true of the entire pack of street children. She knows she'll end up photographing them all before she leaves, and charging a ridiculous amount of “facilitation funds” on her expenses. So be it – the Agency might as well do some good in the world.

“Where shall we take your photo, Mahata? Over there under the tree? Or would you like to come with me to the bazaar?”

The child's eyes light at the suggestion of the food-rich bazaar, but she's not about to let on to her swarm of protectors. “Pretty colours,” she offers shyly, and inclines her head in agreement.

Mahata leads the way to the bazaar, and Veronica photographs her against the spice merchant's wares, then eating a large mango from the fruitseller next door. She asks Mahata to translate the names of the various pastries on offer at the bakery, and insists on buying her one “for later.” By the time they finish, Veronica has taken enough photos to feel the entire crew of street children, and discovered exactly how far along Mahata is, and convinced her to see a doctor.

She nods enthusiastically. “Dr Banner,” the girl explains. “I have enough to see him now.”

Dr Banner would have taken her free of charge, Veronica is sure of that, but she's heard about the early problems he had, and how's he's restructured his “pricing” to take into account the pride of his clients. A handful of coins is considered payment enough – and word of the naïve American photographer will filter it's way back to Banner and his bodyguard.

Veronica sleeps well that night, and tells herself it's because she's laid the groundwork for the mission.

*

Mahata scrunches her toes in the dust of the alley and offers to take Veronica on a tour of the city. Unlike the gaggle of boys, she's too shy to name a price, but she's had two days of chance encounters to be sure that she doesn't need to. They take a rickshaw up to the top of the hill, where the old palace lords it over the squalor below, and venture down to the banks of the Saraswati, where the washer women are perpetually at work. The Harappan village on the outskirts of the city is a daytrip of its own, complete with the compulsory tour guide, but Veronica asks Mahata to accompany them, “just to be safe.”

On the fifth day, the baby kicks, and the girl's face fills with awe. 

“When are you due,” Veronica asks, and some of her concern must telegraph itself to the girl. She pulls Veronica's hand over her belly and they experience the next kick together.

“Dr Banner thinks soon,” she confesses. “I don't know the exact date.”

Veronica can feel her pulse thumping madly through their joined hands. “You're scared.”

She doesn't nod, simply looks down at the ground. “I'm always scared,” she says eventually, and it's the resignation of it that breaks Veronica's heart. She's all of 14. She shouldn't have to be scared.

“Come stay with me,” Veronica offers before her practical mind gets a chance to object. “Let me know you've got somewhere safe to sleep.”

“For the baby,” she adds, and finally, Mahata nods.

They are walking back to Mahata's squat when she asks. It's the first request she's ever made of Veronica, and she can't quite look her in the eye. “Maybe you could come with me to see Dr Banner tomorrow?” 

Veronica nods around the tears that are swelling to choke her. Mission accomplished.

* 

The “clinic” is just Banner and his nurse, a svelte woman with long, straight black hair and an accent from somewhere in the wilds of England. Veronica is wondering if the analysts have it all wrong, until the patient ahead of them slips from her chair in a faint, and not-Natasha-Romanov flows across the room like only a professional assassin can.

“Ay-up, love. Steady now. Maybe we'll just get you in next,” she chirps, and Veronica has to battle to keep the chagrin from showing. Score one for the Black Widow.

She has long enough to cool her jets, waiting quietly with Mahata, until it's their turn. Mahata approaches the desk hesitantly, even though Julie (that's what her nametag says, and she's damn well earned it) smiles encouragingly.

“Did you want to take your friend in, love? That's fine!” and Mahata bobs her head with relief and leads Veronica towards the canvas-screened room where she assumes Dr Banner is waiting.

The other inhabitants of the room come as a surprise, though.

“Thank you, Mahata. You can leave Miss Mars with us now,” Nick Fury orders, and Veronica doesn't even have time to go for her gun before she feels the presence at her back, politely disarming her.

“Sorry, ma'am. I'll just be taking this,” an apologetic voice rumbles, and she's so dumbstruck that she doesn't even bother to be pissed. She's just been frisked by Captain America, Veronica marvels, stomping hard on the urge to giggle.

Her amusement evaporates when a curvaceous brunette sitting on the desk rolls her eyes in obvious disdain. 

“Hands off the blonde, Rogers!”

“Yeah, Cap. Blondes are my territory,” comes the quip from the far corner of the room. Tony Stark. Tony freaking Stark, one of the most recognisable faces on the planet, had somehow stumbled into her operation.

Or not, Veronica realises immediately. Fury was here. Stark, the billionaire widely rumoured to bankroll The Avengers, was here. Romanoff and Banner and Rogers and … some brunette who was no more than vaguely familiar.

“Thor's off introducing Jane to the 'rents, and Hawk's bringing in the chopper,” the mystery girl offers, and it suddenly occurs to Veronica who she is.

Darcy Lewis, girl Friday. To superheroes. Who were … suspiciously friendly, considering she was here to perform an extraction.

That had hinged on the young girl Fury had greeted by name.

“Mahata's one of yours?” Veronica questioned, refusing to let herself feel betrayed, not when she had been spinning her own web around the girl.

“Not yet, but when she has her baby and finishes her education … we'll find a place for her,” Banner says softly. Some of Veronica's disillusionment must show on her face, because he's quick to reassure her. “She is exactly who she says she is, and was living exactly that life six months ago. We just found her first.”

“And you thought – we'll use her as bait. Stick her on the hook and see what she reels in?”

Veronica didn't even realise Romanov was in the room, but it's the Russian woman who answers.

“No. She was never on a hook, and if we hadn't already had our suspicions about you, we wouldn't have sent her.”

“Suspicions?” Veronica squawks, not sure whether to be offended or alarmed.

“That you might be interested in her welfare. That you would choose a non-violent way to approach us. That you were a valid candidate.”

Her blood runs cold at the suggestion, every scrap of scuttlebutt she'd ever heard about SHIELD jumping to mind. Awesome technology, strange experiments. Once you were in, you were in for life …

“Candidate for what, exactly?”

“Extraction,” the supposedly-retired Nick Fury smiles.

_fin_


End file.
